


Respect

by the_authors_exploits



Series: Memories Divided by Pain [6]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, Gen, reassessing their life, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-27 09:03:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8395657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_authors_exploits/pseuds/the_authors_exploits
Summary: [rəˈspekt] noun1. a feeling of deep admiration for someone elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements2. due regard for the feelings or wishes of others





	

**Author's Note:**

> I had no idea what word to do for this part so I just chose respect because I like that word...

They clean up; Damian gathers the rope, cutting it off of Joker’s twisted body, and Jason picks up a spray can Damian had stashed earlier and graffitis the place. They make it look like an accident, like something tragic, and Jason can’t help but stand and grin down from the top floor; Joker looks almost angelic when lighting flashes. His jaw is dislocated, there’s a puddle of blood pooling around him, his limbs are askew, and his eyes are wide and unseeing; Jason loves it.

Damian touches his belt to grab his attention, and Jason turns his grin to his little brother. “Are you ready to leave?”

Jason nods, still grinning; he’s tired, adrenaline coursing through him, and he can’t wait to go home. To shed his armor, to collapse into his bed, and to sleep calmly for the first time in years.

They leave the way they’d come, without a trace, skirting around Joker’s rotting body; Jason leads the way this time, holding open a tarp for Damian to duck through, and then they disappear into the night like smoke.

A few streets over, Damian dumps the rope in a barrel of fire and the homeless people surrounding it thank him for the extra fuel; Jason tosses the cans of paint down a street drain, and Damian watches him calmly. He has a tick, Jason realizes then, where he tips his head to the side and looks up; he blinks, his face blank, but Jason knows.

Jason knows Damian.

Jason knows he’s thinking, assessing, waiting patiently; Jason knows Damian cares. Jason knows Damian assesses how Jason is, calmly deciding how best to proceed; he’s always prepared, it seems, and Jason respects him for that.

“Shall we return home?”

Jason nods; yes. Home. To a place that is safe now, as if for the first time; sure, Killer Croc patrols the sewers, and Poison Ivy may cover half the city in vines, Freeze will bring an early winter… But the Joker is gone.

Graveyards will fill slowly, naturally; Jason can sleep without fear of a ticking time bomb. People won’t be maimed or destroyed anymore; Jason can heal.

They go home, after tipping the police off, to the little safe house apartment, the one room place; Damian strips his suit, changes into a pair of sweats, and Jason stands still for a moment. Damian tips his head again, blinking; assessing, processing.

“Jason?”

He goes to his knees and cries, hysterically, as if dosed with Joker’s gas; but he’s not. He’s just relieved. He covers his face, buries it behind gloved hands, and he laughs and cries and laughs; Damian kneels in front of him, coaxes one of his hands away from his face, and peels the glove off. He does the same with the other hand, unbuckles Jason’s holsters, pulls them off and folds them aside; he pries Jason’s hands away from his face once more and gently pulls the mask off.

Jason watches him with wet cheeks and wide eyes and a relieved grin. “He’s gone,” Jason whispers.

Damian nods, sets the mask aside, and stifles a yawn when he reaches for Jason’s jacket. “He’s gone.”

Jason takes one moment before removing the rest of his armor; his jacket, the body armor. He puts on his own pair of sweats and then looks at Damian who’s rubbing his eyes. The boy hasn’t slept in almost twenty-four hours.

“You should sleep,” Jason says, and goes to pick the kid up; because that’s what he is. A kid. A kid with a brain and a heart and so much might.

Damian scoffs, but lets him anyway. “I can walk on my own.”

“Just…” Jason dumps him on the bed, not unkindly but not the sweetest either; a balance they can both accept, that Jason can say thank you with and Damian can accept. “Just let me do this one thing; tomorrow you can go back to being a little shithead, and I can never bother Bruce again.”

Damian stops fluffing the blankets and pillows and whips his hardened gaze around. “You will not disappear.”

“I…” Thunder claps outside, and Jason only stiffens, startled; he’s not afraid. Not tonight; tomorrow maybe, but not tonight.

“You will not,” Damian orders. “I will not allow you to go again.”

Jason remembers the slightest bit of something right after the library incident, which is all still fuzzy; he remembers being buckled into a plane seat, a duffle bag stuffed at his feet, and there’s the fleeting feeling of panic as the plane lifts off because they were taking him away, away from there, away from that place, away from that person.

“I…”

“You remember, don’t you?

“…A little…”

Damian goes back to making sense of the twisted blankets. “You disappeared one day; no warning, no explanation. You were there, and then you weren’t, and I won’t…I won’t lose you again.”

They don’t say anything else after that; they go to bed, Jason sleeps the best he’s ever slept, and when he wakes up Damian too is still sleeping. They listen to the news together when they both wake up, Damian holding his throw away cell for them both to see the headline; Joker’s been found dead, and the city is torn between celebrating and fearing.

For who could take down such a monster? Who would be so brave? Why, the monster’s victims of course… They’d faced him before and knew him to be nothing but a human, deranged and easily killable.

Jason doesn’t stop grinning for the rest of the day; he makes them both peanut butter and honey sandwiches, cuts Damian’s sandwich into little pizza slices, and Damian doesn’t comment beyond a perturbed glance. It doesn’t damper Jason’s spirits.

“What do you want to do?” Damian asks, once their paper plates are dumped and their food is settling, once Jason is curled under a blanket sitting on the floor; he has it tugged up over his head, just for comfort, because he’s warm and happy and the blanket makes it doubly so. When he doesn’t answer right away, Damian sighs and burrows under the blanket with him; they sit next to each other, the blanket falling over both their heads, and Jason throws an arm over his tiny shoulders. “Jason, what do you want to do?”

One part wants to go home; one part wants to be loved by his once-father, to be safe in the manor, to be a part of something.

But another part says that can’t be; he’s killed. So many times; and Bruce hates him.

“I…”

“We can make it work, if you want; I will not leave you and I will not let them hurt you.”

Jason smiles, tips his head on top of Damian’s, and ignores his little annoyed growl. “You’re just a kid, Dami; and I’ve dragged you into my dirt and filth far enough. You deserve to be happy with your dad.”

“I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to do; I did what I wanted, and no one needs to know what happened.”

Jason closes his eyes and breathe. “I want to go home; I want… I want my family again.”

Damian reaches up and pats at his hair.

They go home; the next day, they pack their bags and they go home. Damian leads the way up the long drive, and the door swings open with so much force Damian thinks it’s Superman on the other side. But it’s not; it’s just Tim, followed very closely by Dick, and they come racing to meet Damian and Jason.

They both look exhausted, Dick sporting bloodshot eyes and dark circles and Tim’s hair bedraggled.

“Where have you been?” Dick shrieks, scooping Damian up in a tight embrace and stumbling forward to throw an arm around Jason’s shoulders. “My god, do you know how worried we were?”

Tim too throws his arms around his brothers, and they stumble about a ball of limbs and overlapping words. “Are you guys ok? Where did you go?”

“We called in J’onn and Diana and Clark’s arriving today to help! We didn’t even know if you were alive!” Dick’s voice cracks and Jason suddenly tightens his grip on his shirt; he buries his face against Dick’s shoulder, and Dick stiffens.

Tim steps away and pulls Damian with him, eyeing him with something that clearly says they’ll be having a long talk later; Dick turns his attention to Jason.

“Jace?”

“I’m sorry.”

Dick presses a hand against Jason’s hair, cradling it carefully. “It’s… It’s going to be ok; I’m sorry I yelled at you. I was scared; we all were. I…”

“I was dead, Dick.”

It steals the breath from his lungs for a minute because, yeah, Jason was dead; Jason was buried, Jason had decomposed and then. And then here he is, standing in Dick’s arms, taller than Dick remembers and more broken too. “I missed you.”

They filter inside after that, after a few more embraces and chastisements and endearments; Dick keeps Jason close, and ruffles Damian’s hair when Damian gets within range. They’re met in the living room by Diana, by Wonder Woman surrounded by papers and blueprints and cctv images, who stands quickly and grips Jason to her; she’s strong and Jason knows better than to fight her.

A few words are exchanged, assurances that Jason and Damian are fine; it’s a similar process with J’onn and then Bruce, and Alfred showers Damian and Jason with chocolate milk and scones and a filling dinner.

Oddly enough, no one questions; they inform. Dick and Tim explain what happened with the Joker going missing from the hospital—missing they say, as if he didn’t escape, as if Damian didn’t recapture him and torture him for days—and then his body being found the previous morning.

“Gordon speculates,” Tim says around a mouthful of meatloaf as he scrolls down an ipad, “That he was planning something; there was graffiti everywhere and Gordon thinks he was up on the top level surveying his work when he slipped and fell.”

Damian picks potato skin from between his teeth. “You don’t sound like you believe it.”

“Joker,” Bruce says, pointedly not looking at Jason. “Showed signs of dehydration and had a wound on the back of his head, as if he had been hit. I believe Gordon is trying to hide it.”

Damian continues to eat, and Jason drinks fruit punch; they don’t say anything, and maybe that’s more compelling than speaking up, but they’re tired and satisfied.

Jason’s given his old room, not the guest room, but he struggles to settle; it’s all too familiar and old and he goes to Damian’s room. The door is unlocked and he enters to see Damian pouring over a casefile. He doesn’t say anything, and neither does Damian, but the kid lifts the corner of his blanket and Jason lays down.

He closes his eyes, he breathes deeply, he listens to the quiet slice of papers being shuffled.

He falls asleep.

But Damian should have known it wouldn’t be that easy, to escape the Joker, to escape suspicion, to escape his mother; he didn’t expect her to show, but when he glances out his window he spots a tall, thin, feminine shadow among the trees and when he blinks she’s gone.

It’s not over yet, he realizes, and he settles a hand on Jason’s arm when the older boy shuffles in his sleep; it’s not over yet and Damian will not let Jason go.


End file.
